Removing condoms without consent: ‘stealthing’ is a scary new trend

By Nick Jordan| 2 years ago

An online community of men are being accused of encouraging sexual assault by telling other guys to remove their condoms without consent. A new study arguing for legal changes to classify the act as sexual assault has revealed the practice, called ‘stealthing’, is becoming more common.

“Internet forums provide not only accounts from victims but encouragement from perpetrators. Promoters provide advice, along with explicit descriptions, for how to successfully trick a partner and remove a condom during sex,” says the Alexandra Brodsky study, mentioning a particularly horrid blog that says men are entitled to ‘bareback’.

Some men preaching the abusive act describe it as a divine right for all men and encourage others on the grounds that it increases physical pleasure and gives a thrill of degradation.

The study, published by Columbia Journal of Gender and Law collects online accounts and interviews victims of the act. “Apart from the fear of specific bad outcomes like pregnancy and STIs, all of the survivors experienced the condom removal as a disempowering, demeaning violation of a sexual agreement,” the new study says.

In an email interview with the study’s author, one victim, identified as Irin, describes her experience: “The next morning we woke up and after a couple of awkward moments during which I told him about a weird dream I had, he said, ‘Wait, so you know I came inside of you last night, right?’ To which I replied, having ensured he was wearing a condom before any p-in-v action happened, ‘Uh . . . what? Weren’t you wearing a condom?’ to which he said something like ‘I took it off.’”

A discussion on the sub-reddit r/askgaybros shows the troubling trend isn’t exclusive to heterosexual relationships. “The guy was a f****** creep, did it like 3–4 times, and kept insisting it was coming off on its own. Looking back I probably should have left, but we were in his car and I was kind of nervous,” redditor jlm25150 says.

The study says that despite most victims experiencing feelings of violation and assault, most didn’t think of the act as rape. Brodsky is arguing for a legal grounds to persecute the perpetrators. “One of my goals with the article, and in proposing a new statute, is to provide a vocabulary and create ways for people to talk about what is a really common experience that just is too often dismissed as just ‘bad sex’ instead of ‘violence’,” Brodsky told the Huffington Post.

Brodsky, a legal fellow for National Women’s Law Center, told the online newspaper she wanted to study the problem once she realized many of her female friends were “struggling with forms of mistreatment by sexual partners that weren’t considered part of the recognized repertoire of gender based violence ― but that seemed rooted in the same misogyny and lack of respect.”